Those of us with long memories will remember that, back in 2007, in those innocent days when no one quite knew what the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) really meant, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), disclosed some of its internal advice (“Lines to Take” or “LTTs”) to its own staff about how to respond to questions and enquiries from members of the public about FOIA. My memory (I hope others might confirm) is that ICO resisted this disclosure for some time. Now, the advice documents reside on the “FOIWiki” pages (where they need, in my opinion, a disclaimer to the effect that some of the them at least are old, and perhaps out-of-date).

Since 2007 a number of further FOIA requests have been made for more recent LTTs – for instance, in 2013, I made a request, and had disclosed to me, a number of LTTs on data protection matters.

It is, therefore, with some astonishment, that I note that a recent FOIA request to ICO for up-to-date LTTs – encompassing recent changes to data protection law – has been refused, on the basis that, apparently, disclosure would, or would be likely to, inhibit the free and frank exchange of views for the purposes of deliberation, and would otherwise prejudice, or would be likely otherwise to prejudice, the effective conduct of public affairs. This is problematic, and concerning, for a number of reasons.

Firstly, the exemptions claimed, which are at section 36 of FOIA, are the statute’s howitzers – they get brought into play when all else fails, and have the effect of flattening everything around them. For this reason, the public authority invoking them must have the “reasonable opinion” of its “qualified person” that disclosure would, or would be likely to, cause the harm claimed. For the ICO, the “qualified person” is the Information Commissioner (Elizabeth Denham) herself. Yet there is no evidence that she has indeed provided this opinion. For that reason, the refusal notice falls – as a matter of law – at the first hurdle.

Secondly, even if Ms Denham had provided her reasonable opinion, the response fails to say why the exemptions are engaged – it merely asserts that they are, in breach of section 17(1)(c) of FOIA.

Thirdly, it posits frankly bizarre public interest points purportedly militating against disclosure, such as that the LTTs “exist as part of the process by which we create guidance, not as guidance by themselves”, and “that ICO staff should have a safe space to provide colleagues with advice for them to respond to challenges posed to us in a changing data protection landscape”, and – most bizarre of all – “following a disclosure of such notes in the past, attempts have been made to utilise similar documents to undermine our regulatory procedures” (heaven forfend someone might cite a regulator’s own documents to advance their case).

There has been such an enormous amount of nonsense spoken about the new data protection regime, and I have praised ICO for confronting some of the myths which have been propagated by the ignorant or the venal. There continues to be great uncertainty and ignorance, and disclosing these LTTs could go a long way towards combatting these. In ICO’s defence, it does identify this as a public interest factor militating in favour of disclosure:

disclosure may help improve knowledge regarding the EIR, FOIA or the new data protection legislation on which the public desire information as evidenced by our increase in calls and enquiry handling

And as far as I’m concerned, that should be the end of the matter. Whether the requester (a certain “Alan Shearer”) chooses to challenge the refusal is another question.

The views in this post (and indeed all posts on this blog) are my personal ones, and do not represent the views of any organisation I am involved with.